Orrin Hatch is a dangerous idiot

Yes, yes, I know. There's something quite juvenile about calling prominent public figures dangerous idiots -- indeed, about name-calling in general. Yesterday it was George Allen, whose buffoonery borders on dangerous idiocy, whose intentional bigotry is dangerous idiocy. And today it's Allen's Senate colleague Orrin Hatch, whose flagrant partisanship with respect to the politics of fear also qualifies as dangerous idiocy.

What did Hatch do to qualify? Consider: According to The Salt Lake Tribune, he said recently that terrorists are "waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again". In other words, Bush and the Republicans stand between America and another 9/11. Elect Democrats at your own peril.

How stupid, no? How idiotic, no?

Yet it's hardly the first time Hatch played the terrorism card to attack Democrats as weak and terrorism-friendly. Back in 2004, a couple of months before the presidential election, he said that terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry". In other words, Osama supported Kerry. The only way to stop Osama and his ilk was to re-elect Bush. Democrats, if elected, will (indirectly) kill Americans. Elect them, to repeat, at your own peril.

Utter nonsense, of course, but such divisive rhetoric works. Republicans have successfully spun the narrative that Democrats are weak on national security and cowardly in the war on terror -- unreliable at best, abettors of terrorism at worst. The narrative has stuck.

Republicans, now as desperate as ever given the prospect of defeat ahead, exploit terrorism for partisan purposes at home, while the Democratic plans to deal with such Republican errors as Iraq are largely ignored by news media that have been bullied into providing Republican-friendly "balance" (see Brock, David, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy).

Dangerous idiots like Orrin Hatch need to be held accountable for what they say and how they say it. It may indeed be rather unbecoming of me to call the Allens and Hatches of the world buffoons and idiots, but I'll continue to call them as I see them.